Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Mountain Cabbage

Euterpe precatoria

Also called Amazon Açaí

Mountain Cabbage
Photo: Dick Culbert from Gibsons, B.C., Canada, CC BY 2.0

Euterpe precatoria is a tall, slender, single-stemmed Amazonian palm grown mainly for its acai-type berries and palm hearts. It needs a warm, humid, wet tropical climate and plenty of room.

Family
Arecaceae (Palm family)
Grows as
Palm
Light
Full sun, Part shade
Water
Keep the soil consistently moist, especially during establishment, and avoid drying out.
Soil
Deep, fertile, well-drained but moisture-retentive soil, rich in organic matter.
Temperature
22–32 °C; protect below 10 °C
How easy
Moderate
Edible
Yes, some parts
Native range
Trinidad to S. Trop. America
Climate
wet tropical

About

Euterpe precatoria is a tall, slender-stemmed, pinnate-leaved palm native to Central and South America and Trinidad and Tobago. E. precatoria is used commercially to produce fruits, although Euterpe oleracea is more commonly cultivated due to its larger fruits.

Uses

E. precatoria is a non-timber forest product that produces acai berries. As well as the edible fruits, this palm is a source of prized (though not very nutritious) hearts of palm. Since it is a single-stemmed palm, harvesting palm hearts kills the tree, and has led to a reduction in numbers. During the 1990s, the palm was heavily harvested for palmito in Peru and Bolivia, but production dropped in the early 2000s due to overharvesting. Today, prices in Peru are currently high since it is now uncommon in the wild.

Other Euterpe plants

Assai palm · Açaí palm · Palm

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Euterpe precatoria by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.

The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.

Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…